LIFE IN FLORENCE.
In 1472 certain Venetians addressed to Lorenzo de’ Medici and Niccolò Ardinghelli a pamphlet wherein they extolled the advantages of their city and its inhabitants, and abused Florence, her constitution, her policy, her commerce and society, and the house of Medici. The challenge was accepted by Benedetto Dei, a scion of an ancient family, a man of much experience in affairs of state and of commerce, and who had been for many years Florentine ambassador in Constantinople, from whence he went to Damascus on a commission for the Sultan. He defended his native city in a lengthy and rather warm reply; a curious testimony to the deep-seated differences between two states which were often bitter enemies and scarcely ever real friends.[395] ‘Florence,’ says the irritated patriot, who seems not to have been acquainted with the brilliant picture of the industry and commerce of Venice drawn in the Great Council in 1420 by the Doge Tommaso Mocenigo,[396] ‘is more beautiful and 540 years older than your Venice. We spring from triply noble blood. We are one-third Roman, one-third Frankish, and one-third Fiesolan. Compare with this, I pray you, the elements of which you are composed! First of all you are Slavonians, secondly Paduans of Antenor’s dirty traitor-brood, thirdly fisher-people from Malamocco and Chioggia. We hold by the Gospel of S. John, you by that of S. Mark, in which there is as much difference as between fine French wool and that with which mattresses are stuffed. We have round about us thirty thousand estates, owned by noblemen and merchants, citizens and craftsmen, yielding us yearly bread and meat, wine and oil, vegetables and cheese, hay and wood, to the value of 900,000 ducats in cash, as you Venetians and Genoese, Chians and Rhodians, who come to buy them, know well enough. We have two trades greater than four of yours in Venice put together—wool and silk. Witness the Roman court and that of the king of Naples, the Marches and Sicily, Constantinople and Pera, Broussa and Adrianople, Salonika and Gallipoli, Chios and Rhodes, where to your envy and disgust there are Florentine consuls and merchants, churches and houses, banks and offices, and whither go more Florentine wares of all kinds, especially silken stuffs and gold and silver brocades, than from Venice, Genoa and Lucca put together. Ask your own merchants who visit Marseilles, Avignon, Lyons, and the whole of Provence, Bruges, Antwerp, London, and other cities, where there are great banks and royal warehouses, fine dwellings, and stately churches; ask them who should know, as they go to the fairs every year, whether they have seen the banks of the Medici, the Pazzi, the Capponi, the Buondelmonti, the Corsini, the Falconieri, the Portinari, and the Ghini, the bank of the Medici and their partners at Milan, and a hundred others which I will not name, because to do so I should need at least a ream of paper. You say we are bankrupt since Cosimo’s death. If we have had losses, it is owing to your dishonesty and the wickedness of your Levant merchants, who have made us lose hundreds of thousands—people with well-known names who have filled Constantinople and Pera with failures, whereof our great houses could tell many a tale. But though Cosimo is dead and buried, he did not take his gold florins and the rest of his money and bonds with him into the other world; nor his banks and store-houses, nor his woollen and silken cloths, nor his plate and jewellery; but he left them all to his worthy sons and grandsons, who take pains to keep them and to add to them, to the vexation of the Venetians and other envious foes, whose tongues are more malicious and slanderous than if they were Sienese.’ Such was the Florentine’s retort to the attacks of the Venetians, whom he bitterly attacked in his turn, when in 1479 they concluded the disadvantageous treaty by which they ceded Negroponte and other of their Levantine possessions to the Turks.
‘Our beautiful Florence,’ says the same chronicler, ‘contains within the city in this present year 1472, 270 shops belonging to the wool-merchants’ guild, from whence their wares are sent to Rome and the Marches, Naples and Sicily, Constantinople and Pera, Adrianople, Broussa and the whole of Turkey. It contains also eighty-three rich and splendid warehouses of the silk-merchants’ guild, and furnishes gold and silver stuffs, velvet, brocade, damask, taffeta, and satin, to Rome and Naples, Catalonia and the whole of Spain, especially Seville, and to Turkey and Barbary. The principal fairs to which these wares go are those of Genoa, the Marches, Ferrara, Mantua, and the whole of Italy; Lyons, Avignon, Montpelier, Antwerp, and London.’ The number of the great banks amounted to thirty-three, that of the cloth-warehouses, which also retailed woollen cloths of all kinds (tagliare), to thirty-two; the shops of the cabinet-makers, whose business was carving and inlaid work (tarsia), to eighty-four, and the workshops of the stone-cutters and marble-workers in the city and its immediate neighbourhood to fifty-four. There were forty-four goldsmiths’ and jewellers’ shops, thirty gold-beaters, silver-wire drawers, and wax-figure makers; the last being in those days a productive branch of industry, as it was the custom to consecrate in the churches and chapels wax-figures of all kinds (voti), chiefly images. ‘Go through all the cities of the world,’ adds the chronicler, ‘nowhere will you find, nor will you ever be able to find, artists in wax equal to those we have now in Florence, and to whom the figures in the Nunziata (the Servite Church) can bear witness.’ Another flourishing branch of industry was the making of the light and elegant gold and silver wreaths and garlands which were worn by young maidens of high degree, and gave their name to the artist-family of Ghirlandajo. Sixty-six was the number of the apothecaries’ and grocers’ shops; seventy that of the butchers, besides eight large shops in which were sold fowls of all kinds, as well as game, and also the native wines which were considered best with game, particularly the pungent white wine, called Trebbiano, from San Giovanni in the upper Arno valley; it would wake the dead, adds Dei, in its praise. The Florentine had a right to be proud of his ‘beautiful’ city. From 1422, when Gino Capponi, the conqueror of Pisa, introduced the art of gold-spinning (the gold thread hitherto used having been procured from Cöln and from Cyprus),[397] down to the time of Lorenzo, was the most brilliant period of the silk manufacture which brought great wealth to the city. The Emperor Sigismund’s ill-famed consort, Barbara von Cilly, once sent one of her people with 1,200 gold florins and three bars of gold to buy silken stuffs. In 1422 the first armed galley was equipped for the voyage to Alexandria, and when she was launched there was a solemn procession to implore the protection of Heaven. Thus Florence began to do without the help of Venetian and Genoese vessels; and the two latter states never got over their vexation at this. The Florentines, however, never became famous sailors. Meanwhile the home-produce kept pace with this freer connection with transmarine lands. There seem to have been no silk-worms reared in Florence before 1423; this branch of industry was much older in other parts of Tuscany: in Modigliana, Pistoja, Pescia, Lucca, &c. In Lorenzo’s days the artisans began to emigrate, and transplanted their art to foreign lands. The restrictions of emigration by statute proved at first useless and afterwards injurious. The extent of the intercourse between Florence and other lands is shown by the list of commercial firms established in various countries in 1469; in France there were twenty-four; in the kingdom of Naples thirty-seven; in Turkey no less than fifty, which were under the protection of the consul Mainardo Ubaldini, whose general relations with the Turkish government became so much the better, as those of the Venetians, whose political and commercial interests too often clashed, grew less secure. Long afterwards it was known that the Florentines held in their hands the whole commerce of France; and in 1521, when war broke out between Charles V. and Francis I., and the Florentine merchant-colony at Lyons found itself in danger, a memorial requesting letters of safe-conduct was addressed to the treasurer Robertet, by no less than thirty houses, including the Albizzi, Guadagni, Panciatichi, Salviati, Bartolini, Strozzi, Gondi, Manetti, Antinori, Dei, Ridolfi, Pitti, Tedaldi, and other familiar names.[398] Many of these families married and settled in France.
In a city where prosperity was so general, it strikes one as remarkable that the rate of interest on money remained so high. When it is remembered that about 1420 the usurers were forbidden to take more than 20 per cent., and that about ten years later the hitherto excluded Jews were admitted in the hope of thereby finding a protection against the greediness of the Christians, it may be easily perceived how shocking the evil was. The complaints about compulsory loans are quite intelligible with such a high rate of interest. That the intended remedy proved fruitless, and Jews and Christians sucked the blood of their neighbours all alike, may be imagined. More than once there was some idea of a public loan establishment. This was the case in 1488, when the popular orator Bernardino da Feltre, of the Minorite order, was preaching in Sta. Croce. He tried to obtain Lorenzo’s support for the erection of a Monte di Pietà, but his efforts proved unsuccessful. It was an universally known fact that the execution of the project was prevented because the Signoria was bribed by a rich Jewish money-changer in Pisa, where this trade had found a special nest.[399] Not till three years after Lorenzo’s death a temporary exclusion of the Jews took place, whose gains in Florence alone were reckoned at 50,000,000 gold florins, and the erection by voluntary contributions of the public loan establishment, which, together with that founded by St. Antonine, and other similar ones, was in the course of years exposed to many vicissitudes.
It was natural that the wealth of the merchants should greatly influence their manner of life. The new aristocracy, which had risen in a great measure by trade and commerce, continued, after the pattern of the family at the head of the State, to combine politics with other business, and liked to display a splendour corresponding to their means, not only in buildings, pious foundations, and works of art, but also in the festive occasions of domestic life. Their houses were richly furnished. The numerous cabinet-makers and marble-workers, chiefly engaged on decorative works, were not solely occupied with churches and public buildings; both they, and painters and sculptors of a higher order, vied with each other in the decoration of dwelling-houses. Pictures were interspersed and relieved with marble and terra-cotta busts. At festive banquets fine table-linen, in keeping with the elegance of the plate, was always used. Up to this time there was little exaggerated luxury; the majority were too cautious for that; and if they wanted to honour a distinguished guest or celebrate a wedding, friends lent each other their plate, following the example of the Medici with the Alamanni, Della Stufa, Lanfredini, Nasi, Sassetti, Davanzati, and others.[400] The same thing occurred at a banquet given by Messer Antonio Ridolfi, ex-ambassador at Naples, to the Duke of Calabria, who had stood godfather to his child. On great occasions similar loans, to which all the wealthy citizens contributed, were made to the Signoria. For ordinary occasions people often used, besides silver spoons and forks, gifts of the community or of friends, chiefly brazen table-plate, dishes, cans, salvers, with silver centres and enamelled or niello edges, with the owner’s arms and frequently also those of his wife.[401] Fine crystal was considered necessary for a well-furnished table. Venice provided most of this article, but Tuscany furnished many glass-factories.
The festivals, which increased in frequency in the days of Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici and the oft-repeated visits of princes, necessarily contributed to the increase of splendour and gaiety. More than once the cost exceeded the amount of supply. If Luca Pitti far outran his means it was, at least, the indulgence of a noble passion—that of building—which tempted him to such extravagance, and a miscalculation in politics which overthrew him. But others were ruined by senseless luxury. A striking example of this is Benedetto Salutati, who, it will be remembered, took part in Lorenzo’s tournament. He was a grandson of the celebrated chancellor; his father had acquired a considerable fortune in business, in which the son succeeded him. Benedetto, we read,[402] had made himself a fine position and was highly esteemed; but he was far from being able to enter the lists with many others as far as the age and nobility of his family were concerned, nor did his fortune put him in a position to maintain a lasting rivalry with them. Nevertheless, he did vie with them. When he rode to that tournament at five-and-twenty, the housings and trappings of his horse were adorned with 168 pounds of fine silver at sixteen ducats a pound, and the cost of the work was reckoned at 8,000l. That he united love for art with love for spending is proved by the fact that his silver helmet was wrought by Antonio del Pollaiuolo.[403] But the immoderate luxury into which he launched may be learned from the description of the banquet which he and his fellow-merchants gave, February 16, 1476, to the sons of King Ferrante at Naples, where the Salutati, like so many of their fellow-countrymen, had settled, and had intercourse with the royal house through their connection with the above-mentioned Antonio Ridolfi, whose daughter was Benedetto’s wife. It was as if a Florentine merchant had tried to vie with the splendour shown by Cardinal Pietro Riario when Ercole d’Este’s bride was in Rome. The very arrangement of the house gave a foretaste of what was to come. The staircase was hung with tapestry and wreaths of yew; the great hall was decorated with richly-worked carpets; and from the ceiling, covered with cloth of the Aragonese colours ornamented with the Duke of Calabria’s arms, hung two great chandeliers of carved and gilt wood bearing wax candles. Opposite the principal entrance, on a dais covered with carpets, stood the dining-table, spread with the finest lace over a worked cover. One side of the hall was occupied by a large sideboard, on which stood about eighty ornamental pieces of plate—salvers, basins, fruit-baskets, tankards—mostly silver, some gold, besides the silver table-service, consisting of about three hundred plates of various kinds, bowls, beakers, and dishes. Adjoining the hall were two rooms opening into each other, hung with woollen stuff representing foliage, and handsomely carpeted. Here the company assembled before and after dinner, and divers musicians contributed to the liveliness of the meal. The guests took their seats amid a flourish of trumpets and fifes. At one end of the table sat the Count of Altavilla, next to him Don Pietro of Aragon, the Duke of Calabria’s younger son, a boy of four years old; then came the four sons of the king—Don Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, Don Federigo, Count of Altamura, Don Giovanni, and Don Arrigo.[404] Next to the latter sat the Count of Belcastro, then came the Count of Ventimiglia and Messer Carlo da Toralto. The Florentine consul, Tommaso Ginori, and Lorenzo Strozzi sat one on each side of Marino Caracciolo; next to them came Francesco Nori (one of the victims of the Pazzi conspiracy) and Andrea Spanocchi of Siena. The seats at the other end of the table were occupied by the Commander de Requesens, Ferrante di Gennaro, and Messer Federigo Carvajal, Commander of Rimini. The outer side of the long table was left for the sewers and cup-bearers, who served the guests and tasted the dishes before presenting them to the princes. Besides these, courtiers stood around the table, partly in attendance partly joining in the conversation. The order of the dinner was as follows: First the introductory course; to each guest was presented a little dish of gilt cakes made of pine-apple kernels, and a little majolica cup containing a beverage made of milk and called Natta (guincata). This was followed by eight silver dishes decorated with coats of arms and mottoes, and containing jelly made from the breast of capons; the dish intended for the duke had, in the middle, a fountain which threw up a shower of orange-flower water. The first part of the meal consisted of twelve courses of different kinds of meat, game, veal, ham, pheasants, partridges, capons, chickens, and blanc-mange; at the end there was placed before the duke a large silver dish, from which, when the cover was taken off, a number of birds flew out. On two large salvers were brought two peacocks, apparently alive, with their tails spread, burning perfumes issuing from their bills, and on their breasts, attached to a silken ribbon, the duke’s arms and the motto Modus et ordo. The second part of the entertainment consisted of nine courses of sweets of various kinds, tarts, light and delicate pastry, with hippocras. The wines, mostly native—Italian or Sicilian—were numerous, and between every two guests was placed a list of the fifteen different kinds, of which the lighter found most favour. At the end of the banquet scented water was offered to everyone in which to dip his hands; then the table-cloth was removed, and on the table was placed a great dish containing a mountain of green boughs with precious essences whose perfume spread through the hall.
In the middle of the banquet some mumming[405] was announced. Eight youths entered dressed as huntsmen, with horns, hounds, and slain game; they were musicians of the chapel royal, and took leave after entertaining the company with some pleasing music. After dinner the guests went to the next room, where they entered into lively discourse and listened to music and singing. The duke and the Count of Belcastro conversed with the Florentine merchants and spoke of scarcely anything but Florence and the prince’s stay in Tuscany. After about an hour the sewers brought the dessert; for each person a silver dish of various kinds of sweets, with covers made of wax and sugar; those for the princes and knights adorned with coloured coats of arms and mottoes, those for the merchants with escutcheons and trade-marks. Cup-bearers also brought wine in gold and silver goblets. Towards the fifth hour of the night the guests departed, having stayed about four hours. The whole house was full of the courtiers and servants of the princes and nobles. All praised the excellency of the dishes; never, it was said, had a more splendid banquet been known. Salutati’s love of show, however, brought its own punishment; unless indeed he was ruined by the heavy troubles brought upon his home by these same Neapolitan princes and nobles not long after. Four or five years after this banquet, according to his own declaration to the registrars, he had returned to his native city a penniless man, intending to give up his business altogether, as, under the sad circumstances of the time and the heavy burdens of the community, he was working at a clear loss. About this time he changed his residence to Rome, where he was engaged in banking business in 1491.[406]
Such doings as these, however, were exceptional; generally, the mode of life in Florence, as throughout Italy, was simple. In describing the English plenipotentiary who spent some time with Pope Eugene, Vespasiano da Bisticci remarks that he had given up his native custom of sitting four hours at table and adopted the Italian fashion of having but one dish, from which the whole household dined together. Even in the noblest houses there was no extravagance; they had only the produce of the immediate neighbourhood and, in particular, of their own estates. Thus it was that an increase of rural industry was doubly desirable. In later days it was wont to be related of Filippo Strozzi the Elder that he introduced the cultivation of the artichoke and that of a new species of fig, and both Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici carefully followed the progress of agriculture. At parties there was no lack of intellectual enjoyments, such as music and improvisation. Politian gives, in a letter to Pico della Mirandola, an account of a dinner at the house of Paolo Orsini, who was in the service of the Republic; on this occasion Orsini’s son, a boy of eleven, stood up and sang some verses of his own composition. Banquets given for entertainment, as well as for learned discourse, chiefly took place at the villas. The richer and more distinguished Florentines divided their time between the city and the country. It has been seen how the pleasant, healthy, fertile neighbourhood of Florence, especially the hills easily attainable for both pedestrians and horsemen, became covered with villas. These gradually spread further out in all directions, up and down the valley of the Arno, beyond Fiesole and Ponte a Sieve to Mugello, better suited for a real summer residence; along the line of hills towards Prato and the valley of the Bisenzio; on the left bank of the Arno through the valleys of the Ema, the Pesa, and the Elsa, and the rich grape-country of Chianti, to the Sienese border. In proportion to the number and beauty of the city residences the number and richness of the country-houses increased also. Hither came princes, kings, and popes; here they enjoyed hospitality at once grand, cordial, and cheerful. The country-life contributed not a little to arouse and maintain liveliness, freshness, fertility, and elasticity of mind in those who were overwhelmed with grave business of all kinds. The villas, far more than the town-houses, were the places where men met for social intercourse, partly because there they could keep themselves more free from business, partly because they were there not troubled with the want of space which was an inconvenience in the city. The villa-life of the literati has been already mentioned. The remarks concerning country-residences and country-life made by Leon Battista Alberti, about the time now under consideration, in his book ‘The Father of the Family,’[407] throw light on an important side of the condition of the citizens, and give a glimpse into the temperament and tastes of the classes who held the direction of the commonwealth. These men did not give themselves up to idle pastimes, but to gaining and keeping a clear survey of personal and civil relations, and to increasing their own prosperity, and with it that of others, by a wise culture which looked beyond the limits of ordinary domestic economy.
There was a darker side to this country-life, and among its shadows was that of the gaming-table. As far back as 1285 a decree had been found necessary forbidding the use of dice and other games of chance,[408] and in the year before the Pazzi conspiracy another similar decree was issued.[409] These prohibitions, however, shared the fate of the sumptuary laws, and no doubt the relations with Naples in the fourteenth century did no good in this respect. Still the Florentines never went such lengths as disgraced the society of cardinals and great lords at Rome in the latter half of the fifteenth century in the days of Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII. Alberti, who in another of his writings[410] describes gaming and its attendant ruin arising from either loss or gain and the bad company inseparable from it, probably witnessed these corruptions more in Rome than in his native land. But while in the city, where they were more exposed to view, men proceeded more cautiously and chess was the game chiefly played, the villas were too often scenes of gambling. That this habit was by no means rooted out in the city is shown by the history of St. Antonine. After the holy archbishop had been preaching one day in the church of Sto. Stefano he passed, with the cross carried before him, through the Borgo Sant’Apostolo. As he was passing the Loggia of the Buondelmonti and saw a company at play, he entered and overthrew the tables; the gamblers, ashamed, threw themselves at his feet and begged for pardon.[411]
The games which were also bodily exercises, and lived on in another form, as the giuoco del pallone, have already been mentioned. They were not without danger; in 1487 a son of Ugolino Verino lost his life by a blow from a ball while engaged in the game of Maglio. During the uncommonly sharp winter of 1491 these games took place on the frozen surface of the Arno. Hunting of all kinds had always been a favourite pastime; in many country-houses may be seen places prepared for decoying birds. Hawking stood first of all in the lists of amusements. For graver exercises of the chase there was a better field in the woods of Mugello, the low country round Pisa, the Volterra country, and the bordering Maremma, than in the well-built and thickly-inhabited environs of the city. As for the stage, profane drama, as is shown by the remarks of Poliziano, was just in the dawn of its existence, and in its present antiquated form only suited for the higher circles. This last was also the condition of the Latin dramas, of which a great number had been composed since the beginning of the fourteenth century. Classical comedies were performed by students. May 12, 1488, the ‘Menæchmi’ of Plautus, a favourite and oft-copied piece, was acted under the direction of Messer Paolo Comparini, probably one of the professors at the university. Poliziano wrote the Latin prologue for this performance, at which Lorenzo was present.[412] The sacred plays continued to attract high and low; and, besides the customary representations on feast-days, they never failed to be performed for the edification of foreign princes and potentates who came to the city. The Florentines seem to have been especially skilled in these dramatic representations, for their companies acted in other places outside their own city, for example, at Rome. Famous artists, like Brunelleschi and the engineer Cecca, who met his death in the Faenza campaign of 1488, invented the apparatus for these mystery-plays and also for the processions in the open air, on which occasions mass was said on the ringhiera of the palace of the Signoria before the people who thronged the square. The most solemn procession of all was that on the eve of St. John; the scene was the precincts of the cathedral and the baptistery, where a gigantic machinery of clouds, with saints and angels, was built up under a lofty canopy of linen.[413] The feasts of the Church were many and splendid; most chiefly that of St. John, which was connected with the history of the city and the State. On the eve of this day and on the day itself the shops of the merchants and artificers made a display of their finest goods; Lorenzo lent his most valuable show-pieces to his friends; and in the Baptistery was exhibited the great silver reredos with its statuettes and reliefs. The splendour was heightened by the participation of the numerous clerical and lay societies, and by the influence of the festivals on the patriotism of the multitude through their connection with glorious events, the memory of which was kept alive among the people by these reciprocal relations. These historical reminiscences went back to the very earliest mythical times of the city. Mystery-plays, shows, and similar festivals were not confined to the churches, companies, and public occasions and places, but also took place in the houses of distinguished citizens, and artists constantly took part in them.[414] When it is considered that at the beginning of the next century the number of the civil companies or brotherhoods for religious exercises amounted to 370,[415] partly for children and partly for adults, it may easily be understood how closely domestic life was intertwined with that of the Church.